101 Ways to Eat Tofu… January 29, 2008

 Okay, not quite 101 ways to eat tofu – but you can find some recipes below that will get you started. I feel that I need to champion that grossly misunderstood block of white, jiggly stuff that is also known as tofu. I looove tofu! In all it’s glorious forms (shaken, stirred, fried, steamed, baked, pureed). It is an amazing versatile addition to any kitchen and once people can get over their squeamishness they will be surprised at the possibilities.

I do not quite understand the hesitancy that arises when people wax poetic about how disgusting tofu is. My first response is that they have never had it cooked properly to have that many bad associations with it. My second response is that there are far more disgusting things that people put in their mouths and label haute cuisine – steak tartare, caviar, foie gras – are a few that come to mind. So, why does everyone pick on a humble little product made of coagulated soy milk?

Tofu on its own is completely tasteless. So, years ago when tofu was first introduced to the Western world you might have had an overenthusiastic health foodie serve you steamed tofu – with nothing else added – which is not the way it is meant to be tasted. The best thing about tofu is its sponge like properties. It soaks up absolutely any flavor that you put on it, or that you add it to. Try at least one of the following recipes on for size and see if it doesn’t change your mind about tofu, or introduce someone in your household or family to these recipes and see if their opinions change. Happy cooking!

Tofu Chimichangas (The Garden of Vegan – Tanya Barnard & Sarah Kramer)

1/4 cup Braggs

3 Tbsp Nutritional Yeast

1/2 tsp each onion and garlic powder

1 cup water

1 lb. firm tofu, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 small onion, chopped

1 Tbsp olive oil

1/4 tbsp. chili powder

1/2 tsp cumin

6 tortilla shells

2 cups vegan refried beans

1 cup soy cheese, grated

1/3 cup olives (optional)

In medium bowl stir together Braggs, nutritional yeast, onion powder, garlic powder, and water. Add tofu and let marinate for 1-2 hours or overnight in the refrigerator. Preheat oven to 350 F. Drain the marinated tofu and set aside. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, saute the garlic and onions in oil until onions are translucent. Add tofu, chili powder, and cumin. Stir together and cook for 8-10 minutes while mashing tofu with wooden spoon. Set aside. Place tortilla shells on a flat surface. In the middle of each shell evenly divide the tofu mixture, beans, soy cheese, and olive. Wrap up and place on baking sheet/dish. Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until tortillas are browned. Serve with guacamole and salsa.

BBQ Baked Tofu (Veganomicon – Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero)

1 jar of BBQ Sauce (the original recipe use a BBQ recipe in the book, but I usually just use a jarred sauce)

1 lb tofu, drained and pressed, cut width-wise into eighths

2 tbsps peanut oil

1 tbsp soy sauce

Preheat the oven to 350. In a 9×18 inch (preferably glass or ceramic) baking pan, dredge the tofu in the peanut oil and soy sauce to coat on both sides. Bake for 15 minutes, then flip the slices and bake for 15 minutes more. Meanwhile prepare whatever sauce you are using. When tofu is done baking, pour the BBQ sauce over it. Return to the oven and bake for 15 more minutes. Remove from the oven and serve.

Fried “Egg” Sandwich (The Garden of Vegan – Tanya Barnard & Sarah Kramer)

This is my all-time favorite breakfast sandwich! Delicious, nutritious, and easy to make!

1 tbsp nutritional yeast

1/8 tsp each pepper and salt

2 slices firm tofu (about the size of your bread)

1 tsp olive oil

Vegannaise

Sprouts/Lettuce/Tomato/Avocado – or anything else you might want to add.

On a small plate stir together the nutritional yeast, salt, and pepper. Dip both sides of the tofu into the mix to coat. In a large frying pan over medium-high heat, saute the tofu in oil until browned. Flip and cook other side. Assemble sandwich using toasted bread, mayo, tofu, and whatever vegetables you want. You can serve it either open-faced or sandwich style

Tonight’s the night… December 10, 2007

…for Tofurkey!  Yes, that is right.  I finally manged to get around to cooking the Tofurkey dinner that I have had in my refrigerator since Thanksgiving.  And guess what?  I should have left it in the refrigerator until next Thanksgiving.  Thank goodness the entire meal only cost me $14.99.  Also, thank goodness my husband wasn’t around to witness the debacle – though I might have to send my poor children to counseling to recover from the experience.  Yes, it was that bad…

I was disappointed.  I wanted Tofurkey to withstand all the jokes that are thrown its way.  Tofurkey has somehow become the one vegan/vegetarian product that everyone is familiar with.  It is the one item that my non-vegan friends taunt and tease me with – I guess in its own weird way Tofurkey is sort of like Spam – it doesn’t get a great deal of respect.  I know people that love Tofurkey – which was the reason I went with it.  I ordered it for Thanksgiving and then forgot to take it to the cabin.  It had since taken up residence in my refrigerator and I could finally stand it no longer, I was ready to take the plunge…

It tasted so artificial.  I guess that was my biggest disappointment.  I am not sure what I expected it to taste like – but with a list of ingredients an arm’s length long – it wasn’t surprising that it didn’t taste like any real food that I know.  It did bring back memories, buried long ago from my childhood, when my parents would go out for the evening and leave the sitter in charge of putting Swanson’s TV Dinners in the oven.  It had that same sort of fake, processed, mystery ingredient taste. 

The entire experience really just underscored my long held grudge against processed foods – especially organic and all natural “processed” foods – that they are still processed no matter what the quality of the ingredients are – and are therefore, expected to have a long life span – and in the end do you really want to put all those ingredients in your body – natural or not!  Plus, it was all just so weird – eating a product made of non-animal products that was designed to replace and to look like an animal product.  Does that make sense?  I think I will stick to my vegetables, and fruits, and grains, in combinations that leave them with a resemblence to what they might look like in nature.  May the Tofurkey rest in peace, at least in this household…

Who Knew? December 5, 2007

Last night’s dinner – a rather thrown together affair, but one that came out just right.  I usually eat with my kids at 5:00 or 5:30.  My day usually starts at 6:00 a.m., so I am ready to call it dinner at that time.  Yesterday worked out differently – at least for a week night.  First of all my husband said that he would actually be home for dinner.  He travels a great deal, and on many of the nights that he is not traveling he is eating dinner with clients in lavish steakhouses. 

Secondly, my husband had a rather odd request that he wanted “some sort of bean and couscous dish – maybe with some mint or basil thrown in.  You must have a recipe for something like that in one of your vegan cookbooks”.  Odd for my husband, because he is a full blown carnivore.  If he could figure out how to have steak for three meals a day he would do it – thankfully the idea of steak smoothies have not caught on!  Although, to give my dear husband a break – his palate has expanded to include – tofu, and tempeh, and a greater assortment of vegetables over the past few years.  However, one thing he has refused to grasp onto is the whole “bean thing”.  So, after I picked my jaw up off the floor – I got to work – or I at least thought about getting to work.

Problem #1 – the cookbook that has an awesome bean salad recipe in it is at our cabin.  So, on to plan B – which is to say I began to improvise.  I can do this – I wrote a bloody post on the concept yesterday – so I should be able to pull something out of my hat.  The first thing that needs to happen when you begin to improvise in the kitchen is to give yourself permission to not follow a recipe.  We have become an nation of expert-followers – and are often hesitant or unsure what to do if there is not one in the vicinity.  I know what flavors work together – plus,  I have certainly cooked enough beans in my lifetime to be able to pull something together. 

So, what to do.  Can of black beans in the pantry, excellent (okay, I live in a small Manhattan apartment so I don’t actually have a pantry – but it sounds so grown up), frozen corn in freezer.  I have olive oil and red wine vinegar, salt and pepper so I can throw all that together for some sort of dressing.  Perfect, shallots in the cupboard, I will add one of those.  I will pick up some cilantro, couscous, red peppers, and some kale to serve as a side-dish.  The peppers were a bust at the market 11.99/lb – which is a tad bit ridiculous – so I found a jar of roasted red peppers in my fridge that will work just as well.  I get home throw everything together except for the couscous (and kale, of course), to let the flavors have some time to meld in the fridge.

Feed the kids at their usual time – I am going to eat with my husband after the kids are in bed.  I make the children ravioli and roasted green bean (amazing! Recipe to follow), and kiwi.  I tell them that the green beans are “green bean french fries” and serve them with ketchup.

Kids are in bed.  Remove bean mixture from refrigerator and bring to room temp.  Boil some water – add some couscous and vegan margarine.  Remove from heat, let sit for five minutes.  Mix couscous and bean mixture.  I get a little crazy at the end and slice an avocado and add pine-nuts to the mix – and voila!  Sort, of a kitchen sink approach, but it all worked out in the end.  I never did make the kale.  The roasted green beans I made were incredible (thanks to Veganomicon) I finished the rest of the batch off, which must have been about 3/4 of a lb. 

So, a relatively quick and easy meal.  The green beans were wilting in my refrigerator and my first thought was to steam them and do the usual toss in vegan margarine and watch my children, and myself, try to gag them down.  I am not really that fond of green beans, but for some reason feel compelled to buy them.  Anyway, I have become a devotee after one simple recipe from Veganomicon for roasted green beans- I know it sounds crazy, but trust me.  Preheat oven at 400; trim green beans; toss in olive oil, salt, and pepper (I also added some bread crumbs – but you could just as easily add vegan parm, or nutritional yeast); throw them in the oven for 15 minutes – and then come out crunchy, and tender, and yummy, and just go out and buy some green beans and try them…

Let’s talk about food… December 4, 2007

In particular, let’s talk about vegan food – in all its yummy, naked glory!  Because really, what else is vegan food but fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains – with some odd amounts of soy matter thrown in for good measure.  However, I think that the concept of vegan food still tends to scare the masses.  It is as if some giant vision of beige mock mystery meats or jiggly steamed tofu are permanently linked to the idea of veganism.  And, I do believe that many vegans become hooked on the idea of trying to replicate non-vegan meals that the dependence on soy products, mock meats, etc come into play.  It is like a friend of my always says “I never worried about how I ate until I became a vegan – now I obsess if I am eating the right combination of foods”, which is pretty ironic considering that a vegan diet is completely and perfectly healthy!

In order to help “kick it up a notch” (as my friend Emeril would say – who recently kicked it up a notch himself by removing himself from the Food Network before the final death knell peals) I hope to add some spice and stability to the vegan kitchen by introducing the art of improvising in the kitchen. 

We all have a tendency, especially when starting something new, to stick to the tried and true – so we follow menus, and recipes, and formulas religiously – hoping that we will finally get it right.  Here is where the art of improvising comes into play – where you can finally call a recipe your own, and hopefully soon enough you will cooking an abundance of meals without even consulting a cook book.  My Baba was a great cook – maybe not along today’s standards of cooking where it seems as if everyone is trying to outdo the last person with exotic ingredients and endless preparations (honestly, if a recipe has over 15 ingredients it must be pretty special before I even look at it).  I don’t think we need to keep reinventing the wheel, instead I believe it makes more sense to concentrate on choosing some specific methods/recipes and learning them really well and seeing where they lead you.  Nigella Lawson says that cooking is about doing something over and over again, and I so agree – so roll up your sleeves and hop right in.

Here are two quick and easy basic recipes that you can use in a variety of ways. 

Roasted Peppers - Add these peppers to tomato or bean soups; a bowl of white beans, or any bean salad; potato salad; hash-browns; scrambled tofu; pasta casseroles; pesto; salsas; bruschettas – on other words – they work in pretty much anything!

4 large red/yellow peppers (or a combination).

1 1/2 tbsps olive oil

Kosher salt

Black Pepper

Additional seasonings – thyme/rosemary/cumin/paprika/oregano/basil/cilantro (it is your recipe – you decide what you are in the mood for).

Preheat oven to 450.  Slice peppers into about 4-5 slices per pepper, cut off any white bits that remain.  Place the peppers in a bowl and add olive oil, add salt and pepper and any seasonings and mix thoroughly.  Place peppers on cookie sheet – skin side down.  Roast peppers for about 30 minutes.  The peppers should be tender and slightly browned around the edges.  Serve right out of the oven, or at room temperature.

Slow Roasted Tomatoes- I have seen a lot of recipes for these tomatoes and many of them are indeed “slow roasted”, averaging about 9-10 hours of roasting time.  Now while I believe that good things come to those who wait, I also believe that sometimes you have to go out and make things happen.  With that in mind this recipe kicks the oven temp up a bit, but doesn’t lose out on any of the great tomatoey taste.  These are ready in about 2 1/2 -3 hours.  Think:  come home, put tomatoes in oven, feed kids dinner, give kids bath, check on tomatoes, put kids to bed, make an appetizer plate – roasted tomatoes, crusty bread, olives, stuffed grape leaves (from deli); pour a glass of wine, or two – look like a domestic genius!

These tomatoes can also be added to pizza, pasta, soup, risotto, bruschetta, pesto, salsa – again- be creative!  The best thing is they last in the fridge for a week, or in the freezer for 2 months.

4 lbs ripe tomatoes (about 30 plum or 12-16 regular)

Olive oil

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp kosher salt

Black pepper

Preheat oven to 325.  Slice plum tomatoes in half, or quarter regular tomatoes.  Toss tomatoes with olive oil to coat.  Place tomatoes cut side up on baking sheet, sprinkle with sugar, salt, and pepper.  Roast tomatoes for 2 1/2 to 3 hours until they are slightly browned and have lost most of their liquid.  They should be quite shriveled, but should also retina their shape when you pick them up.  Let cool to room temperature.  Be creative!

Both recipes are adapted from The Improvisational Cook by Sally Schneider.  While not a vegan cookbook, has tremendous recipes and ideas.  I particularly like her flavored oils and dressings.

The V-word… November 28, 2007

I have yet to figure out why veganism is considered such a threat by the rest of society.  What is it about the word that seems to raise an opinion (usually unflattering) in everyone.  Suddenly everyone is an expert in health, or nutrition, or in some other obscure area that is some how affected by the fact that you have recently become a vegan.  The way I look at it is that at least I have the courage and desire to make positive changes in my life and hopefully on a larger scale on the environment and the world.

 As an aside – I find it interesting that in this entire global warming debate there has been little to no mention, at least in the mainstream press, of the impact that factory farming has on global warming – way more than our addiction to large cars and black oil!  I am pretty sure that Al Gore hasn’t made the switch to seitan and veggie burgers – heck, I don’t even think he has managed to switch to car pooling or bike commuting!  But, I digress….

Anyway, I figure that the best way to react to this craziness of being under the microscope for our eating habits – is to fight back, not with words, but with incredibly healthy and tasty food that will knock the socks off of any critic!  I have the perfect guinea pig at home for this experiment – my husband – who is a carnivore if there every was one.  So, I hope to share some of the top ideas I have for sneaking more veganism into the life of those around you – they don’t even have to know about it. 

I feel this is important for two reasons – as women we are naturally more concerned about our health and the health of our family (yes, this is a generalization – there are many men who are also concerned about health) – and also the majority of women continue to be the ones who cook the majority of family meals – so here is to putting a little bit of health into those slap dash meals!  I am a busy mother of two young children (ages 4 and 20 months).  I am also working on finishing my doctorate and in establishing a freelance writing career – so I don’t have too much time to rush around searching for obscure ingredients, or to spend hours in the kitchen prepping.  I love Christina Pirello, but her statement in Cooking the Whole Foods Way that it takes her an hour and a half to prepare dinner, and that this is the time good food should take to prepare – didn’t sit right with me.  Fine for the weekends when my husband is around to supervise the kids, but not on a daily basis, thank you very much.

I hope this site will be useful to those who are slowly exploring the world of veganism.  I will offer practical advice and tips that will resonate with those who are new to this way of eating – plus lots of fabulous recipes that can easily fit into your life….

 Best…

The Vegan in the Closet November 26, 2007

How did I become a radical vegan at age 38?  Okay, maybe not so radical – I have simply cut out all animal products from my diet – maybe not earth shattering – but doesn’t veganism usually have more to do with college kids rebelling against society, or the “man”, or something like that?  But here I am – after stumbling across some heavy duty reading – that has led me to this path.

The first book I read was The China Study, by Dr. Colin Campbell – who is a very well regarded guru in the vegan world – yet I must be completley out of touch because I had never heard of him, or the China study before.  It is really not all that surprising that his book is not more known as he completely eschews animal products and he has the data from years of research to prove it.  Of course I realize that you can always find numbers and statistics to back up whatever point of view you are trying to convey – but the fact that he does not have a line of diet food, and a best selling “China Study Diet Book” out lend a great deal to legitimacy – plus all his studies have been printed in peer reviewed journals. 

The second book I read was The Ethics of What We Eat – by Peter Singer, which completley changed my entire view point on food.  He follows three different families and the way they eat – the standard american diet, the organic family, and a vegan family.  I already knew all the stuff about factory farming  – and haven’t eaten meat for years – but somehow the egg thing passed me by, as well as the fish stuff – and I honestly find myself not being able to consume these in any form.

It has been 2 1/2 months now, and I made it through Thanksgiving.  So far, it has not been that difficult to get rid of these things from my life.  I have avoided red meat for years, I don’t like chicken, and have never been a big dairy eater.  Eggs and fish are relatively new to me, but I never consumed great amounts of these (my apartment is just too small to cook fish).  I think the most difficult thing for me is how the avoidance of these foods have changed my relationships with those around me.  I find myself wanting to be a quiet vegan – somewhat in the closet – at least for now.  I have strong opinions about the foods that people eat, but at the same time I don’t want to rock the boat too much.  I find that I am often the one under attack for my eating habits, and not the other way around, which is absurd because I really don’t care too much about what other people eat, but for some reason I feel like I am on the defensive when my food choices come under discussion. 

Luckily, my family is supportive and I guess in the end that is all that counts.  My husband is game to try anything and enjoys tofu and has no problem eating all veggie meals (although given the chance he is a huge carnivore!).  My kids are too young at the moment to really know anything different – at the moment they have the odd piece of dairy and my daughter loves shrimp – but I figure I will take that one day at a time.  My parents are also pretty laid back with things.  I tend to do a lot of cooking when I go for a visit, which I love.  I love to cook great vegan meals, that taste delicious and then surprise everyone when I tell them what is the recipe.  I think it also helps that there are numerous funky vegan chefs out there now.  I actually considered veganism about four years ago while I was pregnant with my daughter – but there really weren’t too many places to look.  The recipes looked heavy, and stuffy, and had about a million ingredients in them.  The chefs I have been drawn to (Sarah Kramer, Isa Chandra, Moskowitz), are much more about real life and real food, and I thank them for helping to make this transition easier.

Anyway, I feel good about this change on so many levels – ethically, morally, physically, mentally. 

Let the journey continue….